Stan Wawrinka produced arguably the best performance of his comeback season Wednesday night in Cincinnati, defeating Kei Nishikori 6-4, 6-4 to record just his 10th match win of the year.

The Swiss three-time Grand Slam champion moved nimbly and struck his trademark backhand with conviction to set up a third-round meeting with Marton Fucsovics, whom Wawrinka beat last week in a third-set tie-break in Toronto.

Wawrinka said, “I’m really happy with the match, with the level. I think from 1-4 down I started to play really well, moving well, changing a lot of rhythm, being really aggressive, playing the right game. For sure one of the great matches I played, so I’m happy with the level and to have one more win here.

“I feel [my game] is getting there… I was feeling great on the court… I need to just be patient with myself, to accept things that are happening and by doing that, I know that I will get there.”

Wawrinka showed signs of returning to something approaching peak form last week at the Rogers Cup when he defeated Nick Kyrgios in the first round and pushed eventual champion Rafael Nadal in a 7-5, 7-6(4) loss in the third round.

The 33-year-old continues the hard work to rebuild his ranking following two left knee surgeries in 2017. Currently at No. 151, Wawrinka needed a wild card into Cincinnati and has also been awarded one at the US Open, which begins 27 August.

“There was some really tough moments [after the surgeries],” Wawrinka said. It’s been a year now. Today, for sure, I’m smiling, I’m happy. I won two matches here. I beat Nishikori playing a great level. I feel like that what happened last year it’s really far, but at the same time I remember it was still really tough for me. You have to [separate] winning matches and the result of how you improved, because you can have a lot of up-and-down after a big surgery like that.”

Nishikori grabbed the early break in the first set but Wawrinka claimed back-to-back breaks in the latter stages of the first set and a third consecutive break in the opening game of the second to break open the match.

Coach Magnus Norman is not in Cincinnati this week but will team back up with Wawrinka in New York. “When we started again in April, we did the schedule until the US Open, basically. For sure I’m sure we both want to keep going. I also have Yannick, I have the rest of my team with me, so we’re trying to find the right balance for everybody to be happy.”

Did You Know?
Stan Wawrinka has three Grand Slam titles but just one ATP World Tour Masters 1000 title (Monte-Carlo, 2014).

As player after player has praised the implementation of a shot clock on the ATP World Tour in recent weeks, the mercurial Nick Kyrgios must have been laughing.

A shot clock, a device that’s meant to speed up play and enforce the 25-second time limit between points?

His play and his motivation, self-admittedly, might vary from match to match and tournament to tournament. But receiving a time-violation warning has never been a worry for Kyrgios, who’s one of the fastest servers on the ATP World Tour.

For the Aussie, the stop watch is a reminder to do the opposite: slow down.

“Sometimes when the shot clock is not there, I’ll just continually keep going and going and going. And with the shot clock there, I mean, I’m at the line with, like, 20 seconds to go. I’m, like, ‘Jeez, I can relax and compose myself a little bit’. I don’t even really notice it at all, to be honest,” Kyrgios said.

The 15th-seeded Aussie beat American Denis Kudla 6-7(2), 7-5, 7-6(9) in the first round of the Western & Southern Open in Cincinnati on Tuesday. Kyrgios was in a speedy mood.

Despite the match going three sets, it took less than two hours, and at 1-1 in the decider, Kyrgios recorded what has to be one of his fastest services games yet. He hit two service winners and two aces in 37 seconds, faster than the world record for the 400-metre sprint (43.03 seconds) and the 100-metre freestyle swim (46.91 seconds).

“A quick game is a good game. I don’t really need to think between points. I know what I’m going to do. I mean, I don’t really think about it,” Kyrgios said. “Just go up and pick a spot, literally.”

His quick style of playing might come naturally, said Craig O’Shannessy, an analyst for ATPWorldTour.com, among other outlets, but it’s also the right idea.

During those 25 seconds against Kyrgios, opponents have little to no time to think about what’s working and what they should do next.

“It stops the opponents from cycling through game plans to beat him,” O’Shannessy told ATPWorldTour.com. “When he takes that thinking time away, that game plan formation time away, he’s robbing players of the ability to figure out how to beat him.”

Opponents, O’Shannessy said, might try slowing Kyrgios down. Maybe wander to the back of the court after points and saunter back to the baseline before he serves, or find a few more beads of sweat to wipe with the towel. Returners, however, must still play to the server’s reasonable pace.

“He wants to play fast, he wants to win fast,” O’Shannessy said.

The style has worked for Kyrgios in Cincinnati. He reached his maiden Masters 1000 final here last year (l. to Dimitrov).

“I have been doing it my whole career,” Kyrgios said, “I like free points, and I don’t like to rally too much.”

Jamie Murray and Bruno Soares were made to work hard for a place in the Western & Southern Open quarter-finals, beating Ryan Harrison and Nicholas Monroe 6-4, 7-6(9) on Wednesday.

After failing to convert match point when serving at 6-5 (40/40), Murray and Soares were forced to save two set points in the second-set tie-break before eventually booking their place in the last eight on their fourth match point. The 2017 finalists, who recently captured their second title of the season at the Citi Open, dropped just one point behind their first serves in the first set and now own a 5-2 team record in Cincinnati.

Murray and Soares will meet fifth seeds Lukasz Kubot and Marcelo Melo or Raven Klaasen and Michael Venus for a place in the semi-finals.

Seventh-seeded Juan Sebastian Cabal and Robert Farah did not face a break point in their second-round match, defeating Ben McLachlan and Matwe Middelkoop 7-5, 6-3 in 78 minutes.

Cabal and Farah won 90 per cent of first-serve points to set a quarter-final meeting against top seeds Oliver Marach and Mate Pavic or Nikola Mektic and Alexander Peya. The Colombian duo is making its first appearance in Cincinnati since their debut in 2015, when they fell in the Round of 16 to Bob Bryan and Mike Bryan.